Category Archives: Creativity

We’re all fluent improvisers. The most common way is our speaking. Everyday we talk with family members, friends, teachers, students, and even strangers. And we do it all without a script. Our spoken words are not rehearsed, but they effectively express our thoughts and feelings. A spontaneous conversation is anything but mindless. It’s probably in such improvised interactions that our minds are most engaged—listening to others’ words, reacting emotionally to what we hear, and offering heart-felt opinions of our own. But despite being accomplished improvisational talkers, many of us have not developed this aspect of our musicianship. In a recent poll, I asked my website visitors what music performance skill they would most want to improve. As I type this, improvising is the clear leader (the poll’s are always open!).

This speech analogy may in fact be very similar to the processes of musical improvisation. A few months ago, I caught Charles Limb’s TED Talk “Your Brain on Improv” (the video is embedded at the end of this post). Dr. Limb is a hearing specialist, surgeon, and brain researcher. He’s also a musician. In his talk, he shares—quite eloquently, I might add—some exploratory research he’s doing with musicians who are skilled improvisers. The participants in his research carry out two different performance tasks: playing a memorized jazz solo and improvising an original one over the same chord changes. The kicker is that they do this in a functional MRI scanner, which captures images of activated areas of the brain.

Although Dr. Limb is careful to state that his findings are preliminary, they are nonetheless fascinating to me. They suggest that certain areas of the brain are much more active during improvisation than they are when playing music from memory. More specifically, the areas of the brain that are more active in improvisation are those thought to be autobiographical, including language centers for expressive communication. What’s more—and this is really cool—some areas drop in activity from memorized performance to improvisation. The area of the brain that essentially turns off is an area thought to be involved in self-monitoring.

Dr. Limb’s theory is that what enables these improvisers’ creativity is a “weird dissociation in the frontal lobe” of the brain. While self-expression needs to be boosted, inhibition needs to be reduced. In his words, “You’re willing to make mistakes. You’re not constantly shutting down all of these new generative impulses.” In effect, what facilitates improvisation is more thought of one kind, but also much less thought of another kind. Incidentally he also found similar brain activity in expert rappers engaged in improvised “freestyle” rapping, compared to when they recited an equivalent memorized rap.

As I try to apply these ideas to music making, a couple things come to mind. First, in order to be a fluent improviser, musicians must develop the capacity to be spontaneously self-expressive. Back to the language analogy. Just as we can quickly choose and combine words to communicate our thoughts at any moment, musicians must possess a similar command of their musical instrument in order to be expressive on it. And like learning a language, this kind of fluency is only acquired through much aural experience. But a second important point is that performers must also be able to shut down the self-consciousness that can interfere with genuine expressiveness. This brings to mind the motivation concept of self-efficacy, that a person must not only be competent with a particular skill, but must believe in their competence. So in addition to developing the ability to improvise, musicians must also learn to trust in this growing musicianship. This can be an elusive goal, considering how so much music instruction is based entirely on error-detection (i.e., “let me tell you what’s wrong with what you’re doing”).

I think there’s much to be gained by studying the processes of improvisation. Whether it comes by interviewing amazing musicians or by scanning their brains in action, I’ll eagerly accept the insight gained. As Dr. Limb says in the video below, “Artistic creativity is magical, but it’s not magic.”

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Contrary to my friends’ opinion about my “cushy job as a music professor,” I seem to keep pretty busy. Busy enough that I sometimes feel like I’m just operating class to class, project to project, deadline to deadline. But every so often I’m able to take a step back and wonder, just what am I trying to do here?

Following the advice of any life-coach worth his or her salt, I end up prioritizing my values. I remember the things I consider most important and inwardly rally around them. This kind of process led me to start the blog you’re reading at the moment, and the name I gave it: Being Musical. Being Human.

It’s the big picture items that matter most. For me, the biggest is the natural connection between music and humanness. As a performing musician, I easily get preoccupied with right notes vs. wrong notes. And as a music parent, I worry about my kids getting enough practice time done. Too often I lose perspective by focusing on these little things, and forgetting what the whole purpose of music making is anyway.

I believe music is primarily about the sharing of expression between people. Consider music’s capacity to evoke emotions, stimulate people mentally and physically, and build personal relationships through communal music making. Years ago, anthropologist Alan Merriam offered up a list of 10 functions that music plays within human cultures around the world. They are:

Emotional expression

Aesthetic enjoyment

Entertainment

Communication

Symbolic representation

Physical response

Enforcement of conformity to social norms

Validation of social institutions and religious rituals

Contribution to the continuity and stability of culture

Contribution to the integration of society

I’m pretty sure that Merriam didn’t publish these as a Letterman-esque “Top Ten,” but I like seeing emotional expression at #1. In fact, I think the reason that music is so effective with the other 9 functions is that it enhances them with its emotional/expressive capacity. Take, for example, our American culture’s passion for professional sports, NFL football in particular. This would likely be a “social institution” according to Merriam (now college football is closer to a religious one! :)). Think about the many ways that music enhances our experience of NFL football: the stadium music, the enduring theme of Monday Night Football, and of course the Super Bowl halftime spectacles (U2 in 2002 was easily my favorite).

Just listening to music can be a very emotional experience, and performing it yourself can be even more so. For most people one leads to the other (even if it’s just singing along to a recording). Perhaps the most rewarding form of musical involvement is creating original music that is personally expressive. Maybe it’s with this kind of music making that the connection with humanness is strongest. In order to express yourself, you have to look inward. You have to know yourself, or at least know how you feel. Then you look outward, to others, as you consider how to express yourself to them. In this process, music provides a captivating medium for us to learn about ourselves and learn about others. And learn about how people connect. And learn about the world in which these connections occur.

Music is a lens for considering core issues of humanness: growth . . . the passing of time . . . bodily motion . . . power . . . motivation . . . identity . . . consonance . . . conflict . . . emotion . . . creativity. Some of the musical connections with these things are amazing. For example, a team of researchers found that the rate of slowing that musicians use in a ritardando is “strikingly similar” to the pattern of deceleration that runners naturally take in coming to a stop. That’s pretty cool.

My favorite trumpet player Chet Baker said “I don’t believe that jazz will ever really die. It’s a nice way to express yourself.” The simplicity of this statement is what’s so beautiful to me. Music will always remain because by its nature, it has the capacity to express our humanness. Music is critically important, yes, even in comparison to school staples like math and science. To say that music is not important is to say that human expression is not important. And that’s not a position that’s easily defended.

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In terms of social dynamics, I’m really impressed how a group of musicians, who are strangers to each other, can get together and make music immediately. I suppose this kind of thing is not exclusive to music though. In sports, there’s the pick-up basketball game that commonly takes place in public parks and gyms. The corporate world has ad hoc committees and the justice system throws together a “jury of your peers” for criminal trials. These zero-history groups are pretty interesting for exploring how people get along (or not) with each other.

Some musicians are so good that they can all show up for a gig and without knowing each other, and without any rehearsal, they can put on a quality performance that the audience loves. I think this is pretty common in the jazz world. Groups like this are able to perform on the spot because they all share a common knowledge base. If, say, four jazz musicians are hired and they’ve never played together, they would talk before and during the gig to figure out the songs that they all know. Plus they would rely on standard conventions of jazz performance along the way.

But what about a group of musicians who come together for the first time to create a completely new piece of music to be recorded? We’re not just talking about strangers functioning together and carrying out the things that each of them already knows how to do. Now we’re talking about group creativity. Here’s where it really gets interesting!

Below is a video of singer-songwriter-guitarist John Mayer taking part in such an experience. He joins up with guitarist-bassist and drummer to create a new song for an album. The 18-minute video covers a 12-hour period during which they go from nothing to a polished recording.

Here are a few things you’ll notice in their process:

These guys have great musicianship. They have much experience to draw from, and all of them know a lot of the same things. They know the same conventions of rock music, the same kind of chords and progressions, rhythmic expectations, etc. And of course they all have great ears. They are adept at playing by ear and improvising, which allows them to musically interact so well together.

As they work together, they are establishing social roles in the group process. John Mayer is clearly the leader. I assume he coordinated the project, and they all know that the song they come up with will go on his album. (He’s also the most famous…just how many movie stars has he dated?). Yet he is very accepting of the others’ ideas and input. Especially in a artistic venture like this, all members of a group must feel that their contributions are important and valued by the others. No question that’s the case here.

They effectively communicate with each other. And they do so in a variety of ways. Like any other group, they talk together. Sometimes they say they like each others’ ideas–like at 6:08 in the video where the bassist tells the drummer, “Dude, your groove is disgusting, man” (yes, that’s a compliment!). But they also find tactful ways of voting down certain ideas. These musicians also communicate nonverbally during performance. They use eye contact, facial expression, and physical gestures. Most interesting to me, though, is the way they communicate to each other through the music they play. For example, Mayer and the drummer may hear in the bass line where the bassist thinks the chord progression should go. Or the drummer may signal in a drum fill how he thinks the tempo or rhythmic activity should change.

Creativity requires reflection. All the musicians in the video see the value in experimenting musically and seeing what is spontaneously produced. But they also recognize the need to periodically step away from their instruments, and with fresh ears listen to what they’ve made. Psychologist Howard Gardner has suggested that exceptionally creative individuals are willing to risk failure (i.e., experiment freely), and spend much time reflecting on and refining their work.

It’s pretty impressive what a few great musical minds can come up with together!

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About me

I'm a professor at the University of Nebraska - Lincoln, where I teach classes in music education and music psychology. I'm especially fascinated by the creative and expressive aspects of music making.